Review – Untraceable – Laura Griffin

05Mar

UntraceableAuthor: Laura GriffinSeries: #1 in the Tracer’s series

Description:
ALEX LOVELL MAKES PEOPLE DISAPPEAR. TURNS OUT, SHE’S NOT THE ONLY ONE.

Private investigator Alexandra Lovell uses computer skills and cunning to help clients drop off the radar and begin new lives in safety. Melanie Bess, desperate to escape her abusive cop husband, was one of those clients. But when Melanie vanishes for real, Alex fears the worst, and sets out to discover what happened. Using every resource she can get her hands on — including an elite team of forensic scientists known as the Tracers, and a jaded, sexy Austin PD detective — Alex embarks on a mission to uncover the truth.

As far as homicide cop Nathan Deveraux is concerned, no body means no case. But as much as he wants to believe that Alex’s hunch about Melanie’s murder is wrong, his instincts — and their visceral attraction — won’t let him walk away. As a grim picture of what really happened begins to emerge, Nathan realizes this investigation runs deeper than they could ever have guessed. And each step nearer the truth puts Alex in danger of being the next to disappear….

Review:
I’m conflicted over how to rate this book for a main reason, so I’m going to try and explain that before I get into the review itself…I originally picked up this book about a week and a half ago, knowing that it was #1 in a series, and not being able to find a noted prequel, figured I would be good to go. However, I quickly realized that I was missing something in the interaction between Alex and Nathan – you could tell that there was some kind of history, unfortunately, I didn’t know what. A quick tweet to the author and I discovered that they had met in a previous book in a different series (Whisper of Warning), and since I needed to make sense of their relationship before I could continue, I grabbed it. Which is where my conflict lies – once I factored in Whisper of Warning, I actually really enjoyed Untraceable and would probably give it 3.5-4 out of 5 stars. However, since I had to read another series (because I ended up reading both Whisper of Warning and the preceding book), I have to drop my rating to a 3. If i had known about the linkage ahead of time, it might not have been as big of a deal, so this is more frustration on my part. So I am saying very blatantly, I highly recommend you read the Glass sisters books (Thread of Fear and Whisper of Warning) before trying this series.

Now moving on, having gone through a variety of romance/suspense books (although leaning more towards the romance side), recently, i have to say that Alex was an improvement on many of the heroines. Yes, she had her dumb moments and there were a few times where I was like, seriously…but thankfully she didn’t exhibit the TSTL traits that many seem to have had recently…and then there is Nathan – overall I liked him as a character – he wasn’t the complete Alpha male than shows up so often in rom/sus, and seemed a bit more believable – I also liked that he was a bit older (late 30’s, vice early 30’s) – that gave him an air of experience that I find is often missing in books. Or rather, a more believable air of experience…sometimes I find it hard to believe the stuff that 28-30 years old have gone through in their lives prior to their book (maybe that is a bit jaded of me…).

The mystery aspect of it was ok – for the most part, you knew who did it prior to the reveal since it was discussed early in the book – but there were a few twists that I didn’t see coming. The ending did get all tied in a pretty bow a bit too quickly for me however – I would have liked to see some carry over into another book in the series (although, who knows, maybe this will be the case)…

Overall, 3 stars because of the issue discussed in the first paragraph – but I’ll def. be checking out the rest of the series (especially since I have books #6 and #7 to review as ARC’s…)